The key concept is to aim for SEO rich copy rather than text that is stuffed keywords that causes ‘readability’ to take a hit.

There is more to SEO than just plonking a keyword in every few words, although this will have an incidental effect there are far better ways to increase the chance of your site appearing on a SERP.

What we should be aiming for is a combination of relevance plus authority.

Relevance is easy to define, but there is a skill to making a page relevant.  An exact match is your ideal scenario. For example, if someone searches for ‘Premier League Top Goal Scorers’, a search engine will first search for exact matches, meaning pages that contain that entire phrase in that sequence.

This done, the search engine will go on to look for all these words on the same page, initially in sub-groups e.g. ‘Top Goal Scorers’ or ‘Premier League’, and then as individual words.

Finally, a search engine will seek out pages with any, but not necessarily all of these words on a page.

It is clearly in your best interests to include as many of your keywords as you can, preferably together in a sequence or phrase in order to attract the most relevant visitors.

Adding in keywords individually can also help you attract traffic from unexpected search queries.

Of course, it is important that this is done subtly and that your copy is readable. In the example of ‘Premier League Top Goal Scorers’, a conversation about football will reveal words such as ‘ball, striker, referee, goal’, and it is important that these go into your text, as writing naturally about your subject is a good way of creating relevant copy.

Try to get your keywords into your page title tag, #h1 headline, image alt tags and the main text. Obviously, this will not be possible in all cases, so just make each as strong as you reasonably can.

A search engine will only display the first 70 of your title characters, so try to get as many relevant keywords in there as you can. However, don’t be afraid of using a longer title, as a search engine will still index it. All it means is that you should aim to include your highest priority keywords early on.

Regarding the on-page headline, stick to your highest priority keywords and worry more about the readability factor. After all, if it looks unnatural and saturated with keywords, a user will know and will probably not read your copy.

When you have finished the first draft of your main copy, check it and see where you have inserted your highest priority keywords. Then break it down into smaller components, e.g. ‘Premier League’, ‘Top Goal Scorers’ and insert these into the text wherever they fit naturally.

Next try to replace any generic pronouns with relevant keywords, e.g. replace ‘he’ with ‘the goal scorer’, again always looking to hang on to the readability of your copy.

To ensure this happens, have a final read through and amend anything that sounds forced or unnatural.

If you can keep it readable and accessible while still using as many keywords as you can in the ways suggested above, you have got every chance of achieving that top page rank you are after.

Now Google has made sure that this will no longer be the case, and every phone number you encounter in the paid ads section will be clickable.

Some companies have been applying call extensions for a while, a move which Google has always approved of. Organisations display their phone number at the top of their advert, and users can quickly and easily contact them directly with any queries they may have.

Even then, there may still be other numbers in the main advert text that have not had a call extensions manually added, and these, along will all the numbers included in the adverts of companies that are not using call extensions, will now become clickable.

Previously, Pay Per Click advertisers who set up manual call extensions would receive detailed feedback on them which would help inform their marketing decisions, i.e. if the link resulted in many calls, it was clearly a good way to go with future ad campaigns.

Now, clicks on all numbers present in the ad text itself will be charged at same rate as a click to your website, and companies can set their Google Adwords reports by click type to get an accurate feel for who is clicking what and how often on their advert.

But Google highly recommends creating your own call extension rather than simply including your business number in the main text body. This will not only free up another line in the main text of your advert, but will also allow you to use other features such as vanity numbers, call-only creatives and call metrics reporting.

Lest We Forget.

“Yesterday I visited the new BBC Salford Quays buildings (which are fantastic by the way) to hear Matt Brittin, UK CEO of Google speak. He has worked for Google since 2007 and has been instrumental in their operations here in the UK and Ireland. He has also been acknowledged for his influence in New Media Age, The Financial Times and Wired; the latter voting him No. 1 of 100 people who shaped the wired world in 2010.

Matt mainly spoke about what Google had done to help users’ experiences over the years.  And how Google had improved the way in which results were displayed to people in order to ensure that all users are provided with the most relevant results, whilst fulfilling two words Matt considered most important – “fast” and “happy”.

Here are some of the examples of getting the most relevant results faster:

1) Simply entering the letter “w” outputs the weather in your local area:

Location is determined by the IP address you are connected to. The BBC actually showed weather for London instead of Salford but Matt explained this is a problem with certain companies who provide Internet access via different locations.

Matt shared some interesting statistics with the audience:

• Google has been understanding languages more and more recently. They currently compared governmental EU documents in 27 languages in order to help Google Translate understand more.
• 2 billion people worldwide own a computer, however, 5 billion people own a mobile device. This provides a huge opportunity for mobile but Google isn’t sure where it’ll lead. Matt also shared that people in Asia Pacific will generally use a mobile device as their primary connection to the Internet.
• The UK “knows how to do shit” – Matt has found that the UK understand the Internet in general, where it is now 7% GDP – second only to Denmark

Insights for Search:

As an SEO, I am already well aware of Google’s Insights for Search. For someone who has never used Insights I can understand how interesting it is. Matt used the example of Mr. Bean and found some interesting data:

• Apart from 2007’s spike, trends for “mr bean” searches has been on the gradual increase
• Trends show that Pakistan has the highest number of searches
• 2 top related searches are “mr bean games” and “mr bean cartoon”

From this, he showed us that a good suggestion for the online team would be to possibly target those locations and terms for those search results as there is an increasing demand for Mr. Bean!

Final Thoughts:

Matt concluded by giving a few last thoughts:

• Google primarily thinks about long term trends, not short term. They’re not interested in possible changes in the next month or quarter but more like 10 years.
• Use smaller groups when developing ideas as they focus much more than larger groups
• Be open in developments – being open can only prove to be constructive
• Matt’s words not mine – “Google doesn’t know everything about you”

Although not aimed for an SEO audience this was a very interesting talk and was nice to see that Matt travelled to Salford to acknowledge the North as a hub of digital talent.

By the way, Google are always searching for talented graduates who have strength in both art/design and mathematics. If you excel in both then consider a career at Google!”

Alex Moss, Head of SEO, Banc Media

Google is known for frequently using creative, one-off interpretations of its logo on special occasions. This week saw a particularly special version of the logo released, as the search engine behemoth celebrated its 13^th birthday.

On September 27^th, users will have seen the famous six letters sat around a table laden with party food, hats sitting atop them in the style of a traditional child’s birthday party.

It seems strange to think that Google is only thirteen, and even odder to reflect on the ways things were before it existed. September 1998 was the start point for Google’s life as a privately held company, though it had in fact been in the minds of creators Larry Page and Sergey Brin (then PhD students at the prestigious Stanford University) since 1996.

Their mission, along with current Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, was to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

This was done using the PageRank system still in place today. Previously, search engines had decided rankings based on how many times a search query appeared on the page. This clearly flawed system has been greatly improved by the PageRank system, which factors in a website’s relevance as determined by the number of pages, the importance of these pages and the number of links back to the original site.

Thirteen years on, and Google is now the most visited website on the internet, processing over one billion search requests every day in over one million servers and data centres worldwide.

]]> http://www.bancmedia.com/google-celebrates-13-years-in-business/feed/ 0 http://www.bancmedia.com/interflora-1-0-google-ht/ http://www.bancmedia.com/interflora-1-0-google-ht/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:21:57 +0000 Martin Cozens http://www.bancmedia.com/?p=3697 Today Interflora, the self-professed ‘flower experts’ are delighted with a European court ruling that agreed their trade mark has indeed been infringed by Marks and Spencer, via a Pay Per Click advertisement on Google’s Adwords platform.

It is only Half Time though as a judgement is still outstanding on M&S liability, which the Interflora blog suggests is due sometime next year.  But this judgement raises an interesting debate and one that has ebbed and flowed throughout the relatively short lifetime of Search Engine Advertising.

In the UK, Google and Yahoo historically did not ‘protect the trade mark’ of their advertisers through the Paid Search channel but capitulated under brand pressure and eventually offered a manual opt in option.  The value of this protection was great as the cost of a click could be reduced from an average of say £0.20 to £0.03 or even less, across tens or even hundreds of thousands of clicks that large brands can attract in a month. So big savings were made when Google particularly offered this type of protection in 2004.

So when Google reversed its stance on May 5th 2008 to allow ‘free bidding’ on all keyword terms in the U.K. (it had already relaxed the ruling in the U.S.), there was an uproar from well-known brands as a plethora of companies seized on the opportunity to ‘steal’ customers from their larger competitors by buying keyword position on Google’s Paid Network alongside the more familiar brands.

There was much debate…  Some opined that things would settle down after an initial period of gluttony.  Google themselves stated that their ranking algorithm would ensure that only those companies who were absolutely the most relevant to the consumer (searcher) would remain and those that were unwanted by the searcher would drop off the listing due to (relatively high) costs and low conversion yielding a negative Return On Investment.

But what about this ruling?  Is it fair?  Do large brands have the right to exclusivity of a keyword search?  I’m not so sure.  Michael Barringer, Interflora’s marketing director argues “People searching the internet for ‘Interflora’ want ‘Interflora, the flower experts’ and no one else.“  But the evidence is to the contrary.  People searching for ‘interflora’ or other brand words don’t always click on the branded advert. Therefore, at the point hat they are presented with other options, they consider them.

It’s this point that is interesting.  If a brand chooses to invest money in the awareness of their company and product and consumers are sub-consciously drawn to that brand as in the example here – I want to send some flowers and Interflora pops into my head so I search ‘interflora’ – that does not mean that those consumers will not consider other options.  This is evident from the data.  Consumers still change their mind at the point of purchase.  It’s not the consumers fault that the brand decided to invest millions of pounds into their brand marketing.

If I go to a shop and think to myself “I fancy a Coke”, I often come out of the shop with a Fanta, Pepsi or Orange Juice after I am presented with other choices.  And this is the crux of the argument for me.  A brand should be able to protect their trade mark, absolutely. So no other advertiser can use their trade mark in their advertising.  There should be no passing-off (misrepresenting your goods or services as being the goods and services of another). With this in mind, any advertising that is displayed on Google’s ad network should be well-monitored for this activity.

But as a consumer, even if you are compelled to search for a brand as the first action in the Purchase Lifecycle (e.g. I need a new hoover), the most appropriate outcome for the consumer is to be given a choice (e.g. hoover, dyson, vac).  As a brand, if you have done your job right you will win those consumers anyway.  But if you lose a few along the way, it means there is a more relevant option for the consumer and you need to work harder in future to convert those consumers into customers.

Good luck to Interflora, as a brand owner myself I would fight tooth and nail to protect the investment in our brand and it will be interesting to see the outcome of the M&S case. But I am disappointed with the ruling for Interflora and the impact it might have for advertisers, but more importantly consumers.

Martin Cozens
Managing Director, Banc Media

Most people use Google Maps to simply look up destinations and perhaps get directions, but now users can check the weather in these places as well by selecting ‘weather’ from the drop-down menu in the top right corner.

There were already a handful of lesser-used extra features available, such as traffic, terrain, public transport and photos. Now for those embarking on just a short trip, it is possible to see whether they should pack sunglasses or an umbrella.

This is yet another example of the ongoing competition between search engines, as Bing have already had this feature for a good while already.

However, where the features differ is that while Bing’s system shows the satellite image of the weather for a given location, Google simply shows the standard logo for each kind of weather, along with the temperature.

This data is taken from the US Naval Research Lab, and users have the option of zooming in and out to obtain more localised weather information. For example, zoom in on London and you will start to receive weather for each of the separate boroughs.

Of course, the ideal scenario would be have to have both satellite images and easily accessible logos and temperatures on the same search engine, in much the same way as a television weather forecast presents the information.

The potential for this to happen is clearly there, but how long this will take is impossible to predict.

Previously, Adwords ads would only bring back one or two lines of sitelinks, or an embedded link to the full ad text, but now users can get a third line of links that provides them with even more options.

This new feature will usually only come into play if an advert is found to be the perfect match for a search query, which will normally include a brand name. The user will not only have the opportunity to head for the homepage, but also six other subsections of the site that may help them with their query.

A sitelink is created by an advertiser along with its main text, and currently they can create ten, of which Google would select the ones it deemed the most relevant and display them. These advertisers will now be positively affected by the fact that they will now be able to get up to 60% of these sitelinks displayed at any one time.

While Google unveils its latest helpful new feature, the news at Yahoo is somewhat gloomier as we reported earlier this month.

Chief Executive Carol Bartz is out after the board agreed to remove her from the post. She had been in the job for two-and-a-half years, and will be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse on an interim basis.

Yahoo has fallen way behind Facebook and Google in the lucrative search and social networking markets, leading to advertisers jumping ship and users developing a widespread apathy towards the company. Experts have suggested that Yahoo lacked a real focus under Bartz’s leadership, leading to a decreased potential for long term revenue.

Worrying times then, for one of the pioneers of the online search business, as they slip even further behind their ever improving rivals.

]]> http://www.bancmedia.com/pay-per-click-sitelinks-from-google-expand/feed/ 0 http://www.bancmedia.com/welcome-william-junger-to-banc-media/ http://www.bancmedia.com/welcome-william-junger-to-banc-media/#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:08:44 +0000 Martin Cozens http://www.bancmedia.com/?p=3643 We are delighted to welcome our latest addition to the Banc Media team, William Junger in the position of Sales Executive.

William has successfully passed a probationary period and joins us to support the Sales & Marketing efforts to help raise our profile and introduce new customers to our growing portfolio.

William commented:

“I am really excited about the opportunity to work with Martin and the team.  Having recently discovered SEO & PPC, I can see the potential of this product in the business marketing mix.

Banc Media has built up an envious client portfolio and collected an excellent array of testimonials and case studies that will provide me with the sales collateral I need to introduce new customers interested in Search Engine Marketing.”

You can contact William by email:  william@bancmedia.com or by phone on: 0845 459 0558.

We reported back in July this year that the Board at Yahoo! were in disagreement about Bartz’s future at the Search Engine.  We asked how she would fare after her initial 4 year tenure was reviewed and the answer is clear as she steps aside for Yahoo!’s CFO Tim Morse.

The new appointment is interesting in itself (assuming that its not a temporary solution).  I doubt the cure for Yahoo’s ails reside in an accountant, but at least he won’t waste $US 100m on a global advertising campaign that lacked lustre and a point as Bartz attempted at the end of last year.  The evidence is…who remembers Y!ou?!?!

Carol Bartz is an impressive businesswoman and it was refreshing to see a woman heading up one of the largest ‘online’ companies in the world.  I am sure she will not be short of offers from impressive organisations looking to snap her up now she is free from the shackles of an impossible job – to make Yahoo! the leading search engine in the world – good luck to her successor, the accountant Moore or perhaps another appointment from outside the Yahoo! inner-circle.

The good news?  Following the announcement, Yahoo! shares went up…a bit.